Linode doesn't have backup functionality like slicehost, but they suggest that you only allocate a subset of your disk allotment towards your active image, and use the rest for backup images.<p>Since there's such a huge population of Linode users here, I wanted to ask what sort of "best practices" you have evolved for these images.
I only use Linode nodes for front end web servers, and the websites already sit on Subversion repositories, so I have no need to backup any <i>data</i> on the Linodes.<p>What I do is start a fresh Linode from one of their base images, usually CentOS 5. I strip away all the services I don't need, lock down those that I do, and install the few non-standard packages the sites need to run. After all the configuration is set and the website is up and running, I give the whole thing a reboot just to make sure all the services start up in the right state. When it's all configured correctly, I copy the disk image and it's ready for cloning to new nodes.